


mending hearts

by artenon



Series: Steter Week 2020 [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Good Peter Hale, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:53:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25531654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artenon/pseuds/artenon
Summary: “My favorite flannel. It’s perfectly worn-in and soft and I can’t find it anywhere.”“Didn’t it get ruined the last time we were in the woods?”“You mean the last time we were fleeing for our lives in the woods? I mean,ruinedis kind of a strong word.” Sure, there was a ragged tear running a third of the way up its back, courtesy of a giant spider monster thing that had tried to make a home beneath the Nemeton, but it was definitely still wearable. “It wasn’t that bad.”“Pretty sure it was,” Scott said.
Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: Steter Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1856551
Comments: 34
Kudos: 410
Collections: Steter Week 2020





	mending hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Steter Week! I'm excited to participate, as I am freshly back in Teen Wolf hell. I definitely won't have something for every day, but I've got a few more ideas, so we'll see how much I can write in the next few days, haha.
> 
> I love Accidental Baby Acquisition, but I only found out about Steter Week like... a week ago, which was NOT enough time to write a kidfic. So instead for Day 1 I used the [visual theme](https://qorktrees.tumblr.com/post/624029531352825856/steter-week-2020), which is a charming photo of sewing paraphernalia.
> 
> Thank you [blacktreecle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacktreecle) for such a speedy beta!! <3

Stiles pawed through his hamper. “Come onnn, where is it?”

“Stiles?” Scott’s voice carried up the stairs. “You ready?”

“One sec!” Stiles called back. He abandoned the hamper and went to the chair by his bed. He was halfway done picking through the clothes on it by the time Scott appeared in his doorway.

“Dude, we’re gonna miss the previews.”

“You’re literally the only person who cares about being on time for previews,” Stiles said, lifting the last shirt from his chair and frowning.

“I like watching them.” Scott peered at the chair like it contained secrets. “What are you looking for?”

Stiles dumped his laundry back on the chair. “My favorite flannel. It’s perfectly worn-in and soft and I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Didn’t it get ruined the last time we were in the woods?”

“You mean the last time we were fleeing for our lives in the woods? I mean, _ruined_ is kind of a strong word.” Sure, there was a ragged tear running a third of the way up its back, courtesy of a giant spider monster thing that had tried to make a home beneath the Nemeton, but it was definitely still wearable. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“Pretty sure it was,” Scott said.

“I wouldn’t have tossed it!”

“Okay, okay.” Scott raised his hands in surrender. “I’ll help you look later, alright? But we gotta go now, we’re gonna be late.”

Stiles sighed, not wanting to leave the task of finding his shirt unfinished but knowing they’d miss more than the previews if they dallied much longer. He grabbed the nearest flannel and shrugged it on over his t-shirt. It wasn’t soft enough by far, but it’d have to do for now.

When they got back from the movies, he wasn’t resting until he found his shirt.

* * *

“Don’t you look full of sunshine today,” Peter said when Stiles showed up at his apartment the next morning, sleep-deprived and cranky as shit.

“Shut up,” Stiles grumbled. He’d turned his house upside-down for his shirt last night, long after Scott had passed out in Stiles’s bed. He hadn’t found it. He had, however, found old creative writing assignments he’d saved from third grade and stayed up an extra hour and a half reading every single one of them before finally collapsing into bed.

Peter mimed zipping his lips, although that didn’t stop his smirk. Stiles glared at him.

“Didn’t sleep enough.” Stiles marched past Peter straight to his coffeemaker.

“It’s decaf,” Peter said, which was fine, because caffeine fucked with Stiles’s Adderall; he just liked the taste.

There was a mug sitting by the coffeemaker, filled with still-steaming coffee. The liquid was a pale caramel color, so Peter had obviously modified it, but since Peter was holding his own mug already, Stiles felt entitled to grab this one.

“Point is, I don’t have the energy for your shit,” Stiles said. “What are we doing?”

He should probably be more worried about why Peter had called him over, but he was too tired for that, and maybe too used to it. Honestly, was it too much to ask for one week without some new supernatural bullshit cropping up?

“Translating.” Peter nodded toward the stack of papers on the kitchen table.

Cradling his mug, Stiles squinted at the scanned pages and identified the text on them as Ancient Greek. “That’s what you called me at ass o’clock in the morning for?” He’d had an intense Greek literature phase in middle school and this was where it’d gotten him: translating ancient texts with a reformed murderer werewolf in what was definitely a more high-stakes situation than comparing translations of _The Iliad_. Why was this his life?

“10 AM is not, by any definition, ass o’clock,” Peter said.

“Yeah, well, maybe you missed the latest edition.”

“What?”

“Of the dictionary,” Stiles said. “Where it has an updated definition of ass o’clock. Because you said—never mind. I’m tired. Ignore me.”

He shut himself up by tasting his coffee. It was perfect, just the right amount of cream and sugar to lighten but not overpower the bitter coffee taste—and was that a hint of vanilla? Stiles smiled around the rim, feeling marginally less cranky.

Peter snorted. “I promise you, I couldn’t ignore you even if I wanted to.”

Stiles decided to give Peter a pass—just one, mind—since he’d made such good coffee. He plopped down in a chair and took the top sheet of paper from the stack. “Fine, let’s do this. Pen, highlighter, dictionary?”

Peter turned and disappeared wordlessly down the hall. Stiles shrugged and started on deciphering the first few lines. He was definitely rusty, but—harpies, seriously? His life. His _life_.

When he heard Peter coming back, he stuck his hand out without looking up from the paper. What Peter put in his hand was big and soft and definitely not one of his requested items.

Stiles looked up. “This isn’t—hey, it’s my flannel!”

At least, he thought it was, but then he noticed a button near the bottom that had definitely been missing before. Stiles turned the shirt around to see the back. No, it was definitely his—there was the tear, although it had been mended so well, he only saw the seam when he brought it close to his face.

He turned to Peter with a grin, but Peter wasn’t looking at him, meticulously laying out a row of ballpoint pens and differently colored highlighters on the table.

“Peter,” Stiles said. “Peterrrr.”

Peter turned to him with a sigh. “What?”

“Did you fix this for me?”

“No,” Peter drawled, “I found it like that.”

“Thank you,” Stiles said seriously. “I mean it. It’s my favorite—”

“Yes, you made that very clear when you complained the entire way back to your Jeep about how it got torn.”

“Make fun of me all you want, you still did a nice thing,” Stiles said. He poked Peter in the arm. “You could’ve told me, though, I spent like four hours looking for it yesterday.”

Peter slipped into the seat opposite to Stiles, shaking his head. “I really didn’t think you’d miss it that much.”

“You must’ve, otherwise you wouldn’t have bothered fixing it. You even replaced the missing button, don’t think I didn’t notice.” Stiles hugged the shirt to his chest, grinning. “I’m never letting this go, you know. I mean, I didn’t even know you could sew.”

“I had a large family,” Peter said. “And werewolf children tend to tear things. It was a useful skill to have.”

The way he said it in the past tense made a lump form in Stiles’s throat, and his smile dimmed. Because now he was imagining Peter mending the kids-sized clothes of his nieces and nephews, and shouldn’t that picture be heartwarming instead of heartbreaking?

He couldn’t meet Peter’s eyes, and busied himself folding up his flannel. At least, he tried to, but after he folded it in half twice Peter made a disapproving noise and snatched it out of his hands. He laid it out on the table, smoothed it out under his hands.

Stiles watched, entranced by the quick, deft movement of Peter’s hands. The shirt was folded in seconds, and much more neatly than Stiles had done. Peter pushed it across the table to Stiles, who stared down at it.

“You really cared about them, huh?”

“What?”

“Your family,” Stiles said, raising his head to look at Peter. “It’s kinda weird to imagine—Peter Hale, family man. I mean, you’re such a lone wolf now. But you… you must’ve really loved your family. You took care of them.”

Peter was quiet, but there was a small, sad smile tugging the corner of his lips.

“I bet you noticed a lot of stuff about them,” Stiles said, and he wasn’t just thinking about the Hales anymore. “Their favorite colors.” Or their favorite, perfectly worn-in shirt. “Favorite foods.” Or exactly how they took their coffee. “All their habits.” Like needing a bunch of different colored highlighters for notes, and pens with caps so he could chew on them while he worked.

“And just what are you getting at?” Peter said. It wasn’t accusing, exactly. There was something fragile in his expression, and Stiles swallowed, feeling he had said too much.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just. I bet you were a great uncle. And… I have some old shirts I didn’t have the heart to throw away, even though they’ve torn at the armpits. Wanna fix them up for me?”

Peter rolled his eyes, but Stiles let out a short, relieved breath as some of the tension dissolved.

“If any of them have an atrocious pun on them, I’ll have to refuse on principle,” Peter said.

Stiles grinned. Some of them definitely did, but he had a feeling Peter would fix them all anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/qorktree) / [tumblr](qorktrees.tumblr.com/)


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